by Scot Duke | Featured Contributor
Businesses and organizations do not always need a marketing director to develop a marketing plan. Sometimes an operations manager can do a better job.
Yes, of course, a marketing director usually has the experience to know what direction a business should go and what steps it should take to be successful. A marketing director would know all of the catchwords to keep the CEO happy for a few quarters of the year. However, marketing is starting to NOT influence how the strategy for marketing is developed.
After the business objectives for the year have been approved an operations director can do a much better job of developing a tight, time effective marketing strategy than the marketing director. Things like the development of the strategy and the execution of the strategies are what operations managers are good at doing and will more than likely be slated to do anyway once the marketing director goes through their motions as a director.
So, why don’t more business just let their operations manager be part of, or take the lead of, the company’s marketing strategy?
It probably has to do with the operations manager being pulled in to also doing sales for the company or is strapped with having to do the work involved to deliver what sales have sold. Very seldom are operations managers ever allowed to do NOTHING but operations management.
Operations directors should be allowed to stay in front of the operations process to make sure everything needed for the product or service being sold is on hand for processing. The operations management team should be focused on managing the process to look for more cost-effective ways to produce the product or services.
This is why you may be seeing more job descriptions for Marketing Strategy Operations Directors
When the operations director develops the marketing plan it is guaranteed to keep the strategy from stressing the operations.
Think about bring your operations director into the marketing strategy meetings and see how many problems are solved before they get started. You would be surprised.
Let me know how I can help.
“I am a consummate organizer and project manager who searches for ways to help business owners do business better. My background in analytical problem solving, along with process management experience, allows me to develop sound strategies for our clients.”
There are not many of Me left…, or should I say… available since those of us with decades of real-life business operations are usually snatched up by businesses who understand the value of having someone like me keeping their business afloat.
I am the Director of Operations for SyncLab Media, a video-centric digital marketing consulting agency. I also sit on the board of directors of a number of golf-related businesses.
I have deep experience in process management, business operations and understand first-hand how social media really works in the business world today.
I spent over 30 years in the middle of some of the worst messes a fortune 100 corporation can get its operations into and was part of the many solutions that got them straightened out.
Crisis management is in my blood, solid solutions are in my DNA and ‘not stopping until the job is done’ is just my a way of life for me.
